1
"Look alive."
"Where?", MacCready asked. He lay next to the General on an upper floor of what was left of the Coast Guard's station.
The General checked the V.A.T.S. function of her PIPBOY. "WRVR roof. Trying to hide on the other side of the antenna."
MacCready carefully took aim.
Taking the station from the super mutants had been...well, easy was not a word that should be used about super mutants. But of all the things in this war versus the Gunners, at least this was one that was fatality free. With the salvage (or spoils if preferred) the operation was nearly profitable. Except for the inevitable clean up that reminded way too many of what they looked like on the inside.
The problems arose after the Gunners were certain the super mutants had given them all the grief they were going to. Attempting to construct artillery to destroy a competent, entrenched, enemy force when they could see you doing it was about the boldest thing the General felt she had done.
The myth of the General served her. The very idea of a single pre-war relic that rebuilt the Minutemen, heeled the Institute, had been everywhere from the Glowing Sea and Nuka-World to Far Harbor and who knows where else inspired these Minutemen to do whatever was demanded of them. One of those demands was to fight sniper fire with sniper fire and win. The other, the real horror show, was to trust in their fellow Minutemen to do that while they actually scavenged and built the very ARTILLERY PIECES that were step two of this mission.
All the while, Red Eye was talking up every hit they took no matter how quickly a STIM PACK was applied. The wasteland was weird enough that keeping dry and radiation free next to the river was somehow harder than finding an enemy sniper with a telescopic, night vision capable scope and laser hot enough to dry the wettest soldier out. Powdered cement and busted rubble seemed to be in abundance compared to the raw steel needed, and a hasty concrete wall popped up to take some of the slack off of the sniper cover team.
And this whole debacle turned into weeks.
They were in information black out. If they needed reinforcements, then they'd use one of the ham radios in the APCs. But otherwise, the whole area was declared just as dangerous as the actual East Highway Line and Piper was not allowed anywhere near. Radio Freedom kept on like clockwork in his usual hyper professional way. Travis "Lonely" Miles had puffier and puffier pieces of news as the fronts of the war had more than stabilized. Only Silver Shroud Radio seemed to have any real pep, as pre-war tapes provided new content and rumors abounded of the Commonwealth's very own being out there somewhere and another raider gang was confirmed to not exist where they had supposedly been holed up. But the lack of newly generated content and concern for the fate of the actors still came through.
MacCready fired and the Gunner dropped. His sliding form implied he was being dragged somewhere that he could be STIM PACKed back onto the line. Well, tomorrow there would not be a line.
2
Major MacCready would not let the General be the first to disembark. She told him to save it for Knock-Knock.
After the mortar station was finally ready it pounded WRVR. The radio station had remained standing, let alone fully operational, through the Great War's end. The General was the last person to be convinced that the installation was ready to be taken. Stage three complete, stage four kicked in. That the Minutemen had made Preston's once laughingly said prophecy "You going to start a Minutemen navy?" come in useful, as the small tugs brought soldiers across the river for mop up duty.
"General, I've got movement." A Minutemen covered the pile of rubble as others cleared off. When George Cooper was pulled out, he was immediately stabbed without explanation. His surprised look only faded when he realized it must have been a STIM PACK and not the knife that cut the ropes that had bound him when a woman held out a can of PURIFIED WATER. "Drink this.", she ordered and ran him back to a boat. Rex Goodman soon followed him. They were never seen again...outside Vault 114 on Far Harbor. New episodes of the Silver Shroud resumed two weeks later.
"Have you found him yet?", the General asked. A laser blast made them all duck for a second. The resounding return of Minutemen fire ensured that yesterday's Gunner would not be in shape to be found tomorrow.
"Movement!", a Minutemen from much closer to the front of the obliterated building called out. Rifles were readied all around. When Red-Eye finally crept out of the wreckage, a 10 MILLIMETER PISTOL was plucked from what remained of his hand.
"I thought you played the guitar.", the General asked while holding both his and her pistol on the prone man.
"Uh...hey, Overboss.", Red-Eye. "I could really take a STIM PACK right about now."
The General tilted her head. "But I thought you were the real deal.
"Do you think it's a war crime to poor Nuka-Cola on where you're bleeding and seeing if that refreshes you?"
"Now see here.", Red-Eye tried to defend himself. "I didn't care much for Colter myself."
"Or the gauntlet?"
"Or the guantlet."
"The slavery?"
"Couldn't stand it, Overboss."
"The Gunners and this war they've started that you've been rebranding?"
He spent the last of his energy looking up. "I'm not talking my way out of this, am I?"
The General stood up. "Grab this fool. And someone get him to cough up where Lizzie Wyath ran off to."
"Who?", MacCready asked.
"Nuka-World was once overrun by three raider gangs.", the General explained. "The most business minded were the Operators. They had a rogue chemist that specialized in weaponizing chems. The fact that we haven't faced her chems on the battlefield yet means that she didn't escape to the Gunners, the Forged or the Rust Devils."
"Maybe you killed her.", the major offered. "You did shoot up three gangs and took out all of their leadership. Even you can't keep track of that many enemy combatants."
"But I can keep track of bodies.", she countered. "None of them had that particular mix of BUFFOUT, JET, and blood smell.
"Hopefully the Shroud catches up to her before she finds someone that can back her work."
